


A Token of Iron

by Apfelessig



Category: Turn (TV 2014), Turn: Washington's Spies
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blacksmithing, Courtship, F/M, Metalworking, Winter, flirtation, gift-giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apfelessig/pseuds/Apfelessig
Summary: In a long stagnant winter, Caleb has been busy tinkering on a personal project.
Relationships: Caleb Brewster/Anna Strong
Comments: 15
Kudos: 6
Collections: Turn of the Seasons: Winter 2020-2021





	A Token of Iron

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the lovely [Crepuscularpetrichor!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrepuscularPetrichor/pseuds/CrepuscularPetrichor)

There’s a reason you forge a piece instead of casting it. It’s to do with the grains in the iron.

To cast iron, you first heat it beyond its ability to keep itself together. The metal submits, becoming fluid, grains misaligned. Then it can be poured into a mold to become whatever shape is needed. Once cooled, there it stays, locked and ready to serve. But the memory of the heat is not lost, nor the stress it came with, and cast iron is brittle and liable to fracture.

Forging takes more effort. You heat an ingot until it’s just ready to yield, and then you begin to pull, quickly, before it hardens. Heated and coaxed back into a pliant form, you pull at it again, and twist. Then the basic form is hammered and hammered to flatten the edges, and you pray the iron is forgiving enough not to split. For all its suffering, once complete, a forged piece is made of iron grains aligned in purpose: durable and strong.

Truly, Caleb considers, some people are cast and some are forged.

Night has a way of stretching time out. He’d called her to meet him. At too late an hour perhaps, just as a gentle snowfall started to settle over the town. Won’t be long, he’d said. Got something for you.

Now he shifts his feet, waiting for her to say something. For chrissakes, he’s not a bumbling sixteen. For one thing, he wouldn’t have known how to make the thing in Anna’s hands back then. Her wool mittens are pulled back to bare her fingers and he’s pleased she wants to touch it, even in this midwinter frost.

She turns it over in her hands, taps the iron gently, then harder. 

“Caleb… What is this?” Confused but trying to be polite about it, she searches him with a half-smile.

“It’s a tomahawk. A little one. See, the blade’s curved on the bottom side…”

He traces it with his finger. The weapon had caught his attention in a Colonial History book, resting in the hands of Han Yerry, the Oneida war chief. It had hovered in his mind for days, the way these things sometimes do: captive to obsession before they can be earthed and made tangible.

“I see that.” A hesitation, then, “You made this for me?”

 _Obviously_ , he wants to retort, but that’s not really what she’s asking and that’s not really the answer he wants to give to that question.

“Part of my training, making fiddly stuff,” he says. He bumps into her elbow to turn the piece in her hand, pointing at the delicately welded hook at the back. “Works as a necklace, if you’ve got a chain.”

An involuntary glance at the hollow of her neck, visible below a thin scarf wrapped once around. He quickly looks upward. Perhaps he is sixteen, he thinks. Sinking in those eyes of hers, he just might be.

God, he could fall into her here and now.

He shrinks back a little and it seems to draw her forward.

“I could find one,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

“Had to show I could do forged work all small, like.”

“And you’re giving it to me.”

Not a question this time, but again Caleb ignores the unspoken query. There’s an art to metalworking, an intuition that goes alongside the mechanical. It takes patience to forge a piece. Some things can't be pressed. Push any harder, and it’ll split.

“It’s just a trinket. Thought you might like it.”

“I do.” Her fingers close around the gift.

He sees it on her, two weeks later, as they gather for a late round of drinks at the pub. A mere suggestion under her shirt, her fingers idly move over its shape as she laughs at something one of the others says. She flicks her eyes to him and her fingers still, and the smile she gives is rare and sweet and lasting.

**Author's Note:**

> Keeping Strongbrew alive <3
> 
> Original title was "to draw out, to upset, to squeeze", which are the names of the main three forging processes (no, I did not make that up). The analogy to spy-handling was too good *chef's kiss*
> 
> Draw out: length increases, cross-section decreases  
> Upset: length decreases, cross-section increases  
> Squeeze in closed compression dies: produces multidirectional flow
> 
> Comment below which Turn characters you believe are cast and which are forged! Curious whether your interpretation lines up with mine ;)


End file.
